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Army cordons seal off rebel monasteries in Tibet

More than 1,000 Buddhist monks are still locked up under armed guard in monasteries around Lhasa, four months after anti-Chinese riots, while the authorities implement their harshest crackdown on religion in decades.

Eyewitnesses confirm that People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops have sealed off Drepung, the largest monastery in Tibet. Nobody may go in or out. Photography is banned and passers-by are shooed away.

A camp of olive-green tents and two rings of roadblocks surround this sanctuary of meditation. Local people say the monks pay the army for food to be sent to them.

Drepung was singled out for punishment and "re-education" because Chinese security forces identified many of its monks on video recordings of the protests against Beijing's policies in Tibet.

The Nechung monastery, about a mile south, was also sealed off. Tibetans said its monks were known for their fidelity to the Dalai Lama.